Syria Censors, Lecherous Priests Thrive in Paris: Theater

Thierry Hancisse and Denis Podalydes as the Mufti and Abdallah in "Ritual for a Metamorphosis" by Saadallah Wannous. The play is in repertory at the Comedie-Francaise through July 11. Photographer: Mirco Magliocca/Comedie-Francaise via Bloomberg

June 17 (Bloomberg) -- The civil war in Syria has produced
an unexpected consequence: The Comedie-Francaise, France’s most
prestigious theater, has decided to stage the work of a Syrian
author -- the first by an Arab in its 333-year history.

“Rituel pour une Metamorphose” (Ritual for a Metamorphosis)
isn’t a comment on the current situation. Its author, Saadallah
Wannous, Syria’s most prominent playwright, died in 1997.

Yet the play says something about the tensions between
politics and religion in the modern Arab world and a society
that still finds it difficult to treat women as equals. It also
tackles another taboo, homosexuality.

No theater in Damascus, the scene of the 1994 play, dared
touch it during the author’s lifetime. Only in recent years has
it been staged there.

To be on the safe side, Wannous shifted the action to the
19th century when Syria was a province of the Ottoman Empire.

The Mufti, the highest authority on Islamic law, is at
loggerheads with Abdallah, the leader of the local notables. He
has Abdallah arrested while he is making love to his concubine,
Warda.

To put Abdallah in his debt, he offers to extract him from
his embarrassing predicament by freeing Warda and secretly
exchanging her for Moumina, Abdallah’s wife.

Liberated Woman

Abdallah is delighted, yet Moumina accepts only on
condition that her husband repudiates her: She wants to be a
free woman and a concubine herself.

Almassa, as she now calls herself, is a tremendous hit with
Damascus’s female population -- so much so that the Mufti issues
a number of fatwas to re-establish the old order: Women are
forbidden to wear chic clothes and jewelry like Almassa; dance
and music are banned; non-religious books must be burned.

Later, the Mufti revokes the fatwas because he himself has
fallen under Almassa’s spell. In the end, she is killed by her
brother who is worried about the family’s honor.

Then Abdallah has a Damascene moment and becomes an
itinerant preacher.

It would be pointless to pretend that “Ritual for a
Metamorphosis” is a neglected masterpiece. Moumina-Almassa is no
Nora, the heroine of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” who leaves her
feckless husband.

Cartoon Cutouts

Wannous’s characters are cartoonish, like in a Brechtian
parable play.

Yet the work provides a valuable glimpse into what could
and could not be said in the Syria of the Assad clan.
Dictatorships are an excellent training ground in the art of
reading between the lines.

The religious authorities, we learn, could be openly
ridiculed under the Baathist regime. On the other hand, the
secular Ottoman governor had to be handled with kid gloves.

Sulayman Al-Bassam, the Kuwaiti director, seems to be in
two minds about the play.

The first half is presented as an Oriental fairy tale with
an atmospheric set (Sam Collins) and colorful costumes (Virginie
Gervaise). The abstract no-man’s-land in the second half
suggests that the play’s message isn’t limited to the Middle
East.